What the heck is going on? If you live in the Mid-Atlantic region of the country, it’s been quite a week. Heavy down pours from monster sized thumder storms, then a little surprise package early in the week in the form of an earthquake that rumbled through the region and registered at 5.8 on the Richter scale. Out in California, where I grew up with earthquakes, a 5.8 would get our attention, but not for very long. A friend of mine from San Francisco called it a “massage.” We’ve had a few aftershocks in the 2’s and 4’s so I guess Mother Nature is feeling the need to grab some headlines. And headlines, she will get as this weekend approaches and with it comes Hurricane Irene. This little bundle of wind and rain and bad news is the size of Arizona.
Irene reminds me of cancer. She started as a small system, a spot, off the Cape Verde Basin near Africa. No one paid much attention to it until she grew a little bigger. Then it began to affect the area around it. The warm currents started to feed this spot and before long, it wasn’t a spot anymore, just like cancer. A few cells gather, the soil is perfect for growth and before long the spot becomes a growth and a storm begins to form in body. Irene did the same, as she began to spin into the warm Atlantic Ocean.
Irene found everything she needed to thrive in the Atlantic. The water got even warmer, the currents pushed her over Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, thanks to a jet stream that cleared a path she’s now making a B-line for the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
We will do what we can to fight off Irene’s wrath, but she can’t be stopped. She’s a beast.
There will be damage. Lives will be changed. Lives could be lost.
Sound familiar?
August 31, 2011 @ 8:46 am
I hope you guys are okay now and was safe when the hurricane passed by your town. Oh and your analogy truly is spot on!
August 26, 2011 @ 9:57 pm
That little “massage” shook our house violently, smashed a Native pot to smithereens, broke a piece of sculpture into three pieces, tore a poster, and put chips in our glass shelves as artwork fell. I had to reposition every hanging object in the house. I can definitely do without any more tremors of that kind.
I wish storms and cancer were only metaphors instead of realities.
My friend T. began her radiation and chemo regimen this week. At the end of it she’s heading to Duke where a lot of good medicine is being applied to treat glioblastoma. She’s documenting her experience in words and images. Seeing the picture of her masked, receiving radiation, was difficult (couldn’t help but think of my brother). She’s an inspiration. Please keep her in your prayers.
August 26, 2011 @ 8:21 pm
Quite and analogy but certainly a perfect one…the perfect storm so to speak. Starts small, grows a little, creates problems and one day it blows up and you hear the dreaded news. It comes into our lives and wreaks havoc and changes our lives forever and then it just moves on…to someone else. I’ve never lived further east than Washington but I feel like I could withstand a hurricane and recover but the recovery from the devastation that cancer has left behind seems impossible. I still feel like I’m in the “eye” of cancer.